To aid in viewing the interior structures and regions of the eye when performing intraocular surgery, such as for example vitreo retinal surgery, one or more surgical contact lenses have been fitted into a lens ring that is sutured in place and spans the cornea. A cushion of transparent Healon or similar material is typically applied to the anterior surface of the eye to prevent corneal abrasion and to enhance optical clarity. These surgical lenses have been fabricated from various types of glasses.
During a given surgical procedure, such current surgical contact lenses typically are removed from the lens ring and replaced several times using forceps. For example, a lens having one optical arrangement or configuration may be replaced with a lens having a different optical arrangement. As a result, these glass contact lenses often quickly degrade in optical quality because of scratches or chips resulting from manipulation with the forceps or other instruments.
Additionally, to attempt to reuse current lenses, efforts are made to clean and sterilize the lenses between surgical procedures. However, such cleaning and sterilization often results in scratching or other optical degradation.
Consequently, current lenses are often used only in a limited number of several surgical procedures before being discarded due to optical degradation. Of course, such limited use results in significant costs and waste. Also, special care is generally exercised when handling current lenses during a surgical procedure or when cleaning to minimize scratching or other optical damage. Such requisite careful handling is also clearly problematic and complicates surgical and cleaning procedures.
It thus would be desirable to have improved surgical contact lenses that were sufficiently robust to resist degradation from typical handling and cleaning procedures. It would be particularly desirable to have improved surgical contact lenses that were sufficiently robust to enable repeated use of lenses, thereby reducing costs and waste.